Control Set-Ups for SWR SM 900 Owners

95% of the time I set all the controls to 12 o'clock (volume always where needed, usually 10-11 in bridged mode). Ken Smith in passive mode with both pickups blended and into Yorkville 2x10 & 1x15 and a line (not direct) XLR out to the board which so far sound men have loved (they're always hesitant that I'm going to yank the EQ all over)

Great for my original rock band. The preamp will clip only on the loudest of lowest B string thumps and the limiter light is on half of the time.

In the studio I got a great rock sound by full EQ boost on the bass hitting the preamp hard, preamp gain at 10 oclock, limiter at 9 o'clock and a little out of the 250-300 range to clean things up and define it a little more.

I'll be experimenting with the two EQ channels now, setting up two different sounds so I'd love to hear other SM 900 users setups.

When I had mine (sold about 3 years ago ) I always combined the eq's, making a 6 band parametric. I generally tried to dial in the 6 with the 'bass' and 'treble' controls flat. I'd find a good sound in my rehearsal room that would invariably suck at shows, and then dial in the 'bass' and 'treble' at the venue.

I got the most oomph with a 6 db boost at 40hz, an 8 db boost at 240 hz, I'd set the mids to -2@400 hz, -4@800 hz, and then pretty much leave the highs flat. maybe boost a little at about 1.6 khz. Very clean sounding, but thumpy, which I liked.

I was using it with a Mesa Diesel 6x10, and I never switched between the eq's. I'm a set it and forget it guy when it comes to my amps. I'll tweak effects til dawn, but I really don't like messing with an amp once I've found a good sound.

I hesitate to tell you why I sold it because my experience is probably different than yours. I was playing with an extraordinarily loud band at the time. Very hardcore (dueling screamers) with a guitar player that turned his Mesa Dual Rectifier to 11 and broke the knob off. Great tone, just super loud. They really wanted a low-gutteral thump unlike any bassist I've heard, but I tried with my -900. During rehearsal once, the amp got so hot it went into protect and shut down for a few minutes until it cooled. I sold it to finance a Mesa 400+, which still didn't really do the trick, but I decided hardcore wasn't for me and joined a funk band...where the -900 would have worked great.

They eventually got a guy who played a Trace Elliot head through a TE 8x10, and I have no idea how he got that rig to sound like it did.

btw, that band now has a Fodera through Ampeg SVT player, and I guess it works out for them.

ps. at the time I was playing a Carvin BB-76P. I'm sure there was a large combination of factors leading to the thermal shutdown (notable my EQ settings putting out unnecessary subsonics, forcing the power section to become overtaxed).

for the most part the eq on the sm-900 is most useful in correcting for various room anomalies at different gigs, or for removing or adding problem freqencies to different basses
combining the 2 eq's together is fun, and as a side benifit you get a 4 dB increase in volume out of the preamp
the aural enhancer can be fun, but in real world applications it sounds best at settings from off to 12 o-clock
most of the time the bass and treble shelving eq's are all you need